CARDS CONTINUE POSTSEASON SUCCESS
Upper Dublin reaches district semis for 3rd time in 4 seasons
Another win as the calendar flipped to November and the air turned cold — and last Friday night, it was freezing cold — showed the Upper Dublin football team can maintain its place among the top programs in District 1.
For the third time in four seasons — and the first time in Class 5A — the Cardinals advanced to the district semifinals, this time doing so by holding on late against Academy Park to knock off the Knights 17-12 on the road.
“What’s great is that these seniors and juniors and sophomores now in the program are continuing the tradition of what was done for them before. That’s really what you want to do when you build a program,” said Upper Dublin coach Bret Stover after the quarterfinal win. “Our goal is we want to get to the top but then we didn’t want to crash to the bottom. We want to be here, maybe we’d dip a little bit, just because of whatever it was but we wanted to be in the game swinging at the end in meaningful games in November.
“We’ve always preached that even when we were 0-11 (in 2004), we wanted to play meaningful games in November. And now, here we are, we’re playing mean-
ingful games in November. I just wish it would get back to September weather.”
It’s been a steady climb for the Cardinals since that winless campaign in 2004. After going 4-7 in 2005, the Cardinals have had just one losing season since — a 4-6 finish in 2009 — and have reached the district playoffs in nine of the past 11 years, including the last five.
Postseason success eluded UD for a while, the Cards dropping five straight District 1-4A first round games from 2007-2013 but since 2014 Upper Dublin has won nine games in the District playoffs.
The Cardinals made the 4A semifinals in 2014 then in 2015 took the District 1-4A title with a 41-26 win over North Penn in the final. Last season with PIAA going to six classes, UD reach the 5A quarters and now this year finds itself in the 5A semis. The Cardinals head to undefeated No. 1 seed Springfield-Delco Friday to decide who gets to reach the district championship.
Last Friday night, things were shaky early and late against Academy Park, the defending District 1-5A champ that also won the 3A title in 2015.
The Knights capped the game’s opening series with a Nathaniel Holmes 8-yard touchdown run — the extra point hitting the left post leaving the lead at 6-0. But from the there, UD kept the Academy Park offense off the scoreboard, getting a big help from the Knights’ inability to hold onto the football — AP fumbling away possession four times.
“Their speed, we can’t replicate their speed in practice. They’re that good. And we knew that coming in,” Stover said. “It just takes you a couple plays to settle in that level of the game and once we did we were pretty much on for the rest of the (game).”
Upper Dublin looked on its way to the win with 4:14 left in the fourth quarter with a 17-6 lead and the ball after Mike Slivka’s end-zone interception. But a fumble two plays later was scooped up by AP’s Devon Golds for a 23-yard touchdown and the margin was down to just five.
“That’s the one scenario you don’t think about there, you think about maybe he could get stuffed and then they run the clock or they got to burn the time out, you can run 25 seconds off,” Stover said. “Those are the things that are going through our head — or he pops it for a first down. Not that play.”
The Cardinals recovered the onsides kick but after a 1-yard run and two incompletions, had to punt. A high snap on the punt try resulted a 26-yard loss, giving Academy Park the ball at the UD 25. But the Upper Dublin defense found a way to deny a game-winning touchdown, with Selvin Haynes’ fourthdown pass breakup in the end zone sealing the Cardinals’ spot in another semifinal.
“Main job was to keep them out of the end zone,” Haynes said. “We do whatever we had to do. We dig deep. We stopped them.”
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North Penn’s 36-35 loss last Friday to Garnet Valley in the District 1-6A quarterfinals — in which the Jaguars rallied from a 35-7 deficit — ended the Knights’ sevengame win streak in the District 1 quarters. North Penn’s last defeat in the round came in 2007 when it fell to Neshaminy 35-0.
Neshaminy was also bounced in the quarters, the top seed getting upset by No. 8 Pennsbury 36-17, making it just the second time since District 1 expanded its largest class’ tournament to 16 teams — at the time 4A — in 2006 that both the Knights and Neshaminy are missing the final four. Neither side made 4A semis in 2014
— NP falling to West Chester Henderson in the first round while Neshaminy did not make the playoffs.
The Suburban One League still has two teams left in the 6A field — Pennsbury taking on No. 4 Coatesville while No. 7 Pennridge visits No. 3 Garnet Valley.
Pennridge is in the semis for the first time since 2012 after back-to-back shutouts of Quakertown and Perkiomen Valley — the Rams blanking PV for the second time this season.
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La Salle could not stop St. Joseph’s Prep from continuing to hold the upper hand in Philadelphia Catholic League sides’ rivalry. The Hawks earned a fourth straight win over the Explorers — and ninth victory in their last 10 meetings — with a 17-3 win in the PCL 6A final last Friday at Northeast High School.
Prep’s win streak is now at 24 games heading into the District 12 final against Northeast. Per maxpreps. com, only Bishop Guilfoyle (58), Cathedral Prep (25) and Steel Valley (25) having long winning streaks in Pennsylvania.
Bishop Guilfoyle’s streak is third-longest in the nation — Wisconsin’s Kimberly has the longest at 69 games with Alaska’s Soldotna second at 59.